Contemporary Russia and the Working-Class Movement[1]

A NEWSPAPER REPORT

Published:First published in Russian in the fourth Russian edition of V. I. Lenin’sCollected Works.

      Published April 22, 1913 in the newspaperNaprzódNo. 92.

      Published according theNaprzódtext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages47-51.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.

Afew days ago in Cracow a report was delivered by Comrade Lenin, one
of the most outstanding leaders of the Russian Social-Democrats. Here
follows a brief outline of the report; for the information of our Galician
readers we must add that Lenin is the leader of the so-called “Bolshevik”
trend, that is, the more radical, implacable trend in the Russian
Social-Democratic Party.

Whiledescribing the working-class movement in Russia, the speaker
noted its great importance to the Western countries as well, since there
was no doubt that in the period of socialist revolutions events there would
resemble those that had taken place in Russia. As an example, the speaker
mentioned the sudden transition from relative calm to the emergence of mass
movements. In 1895 the number of strikers in Russia had been only 40,000
whereas in 1905 there had been 400,000 striking workers in January alone;
in the course of the whole year the figure had increased to three million.

Thepresent political situation in Russia had come about as a result of
revolutionary experience, as a result of the class battles that had taken
place at that time. A certain Japanese had called the Russian revolution
“an impotent revolution under an incompetent government”. The government,
however, had made full use of the experience of the revolution. It would
suffice to mention the attitude of the government to the peasantry. At
first, when the law governing the elections to the First Duma had been
drawn up, the government had placed great hopes in the peasantry as a
quiet, patriarchal element. But when it turned out that theRussian peasant, fighting for land, is by nature, not a socialist indeed,
as some Narodnik utopians had thought, but, at any rate, a democrat, the
government made avolte-faceand changed the election
law.[2]

Thepresent Duma, he said, was no plaything, but an actual organ of
power of the reactionary strata, the tsarist bureaucracy allied to the
feudal landowners and the top bourgeoisie.

Whathad been the role of the Russian liberals? In the First and Second
Dumas the liberals had tried to pacify the peasants, to divert them from
the revolutionary to the so-called constitutional path. It was obvious,
however, that the purchase of part of the landed estates, proposed by the
Cadets, was only a fresh attempt to plunder and deceive the Russian
peasant. This attempt had failed mainly owing to the tactics of the
Social-Democrats in the Duma, who had been persistently urging the peasants
leftward.

TheOctober strike had been a turning-point in Russian
liberalism. Before the revolution the liberals had said that “the
revolution must become the ruling power” (Struve), but they later changed
their tone, allegedly in fear of the excesses of the revolution although
they knew perfectly well that the only “excesses” were those of the
government. The Octobrists departed from liberalism and went over directly
to the side of the government, serving the government as its lackeys. It
was at that time that Guchkov, leader of the Octobrists, had written to
Prince Trubetskoi that further revolutionary explosions menaced the very
well-being of the bourgeoisie.

Suchwas the class basis of contemporary counter-revolution. Acts of
lawlessness were committed quite openly and the class character of the
government had been exposed. The government handed out praise and medals
for lawless acts against revolutionary elements. The speaker gave an
example: during the recent search of Deputy Petrovsky’s apartment the
police, in violation of the law, had locked him in a room, and when a
question was asked about it in the Duma, the Minister said that they should
be grateful to the police for such zeal.

Stolypinhad learned from the experience of Class battles during the
revolution and had launched his notorious agrarianpolicy of stratifying the peasants into affluent petty bourgeois and
semi-proletarian elements. This new policy was a mockery of the old
“patriarchal slogans” of Katkov and
Pobedonostsev.[3]The government, however, could not have acted
otherwise.

Thegovernment, therefore, relied on the landowners and the terrified
bourgeoisie in introducing the present counter revolutionary system. It was
true that the “united
nobility”[4]had tried to get the Duma disbanded as far back as 1906,
but the government had then waited before making the coup, expecting
results from its agrarian policy in respect of the peasants and changes in
the psychology of a bourgeoisie terrified by the revolution.

Thiscounter-revolutionary system had nowplayed itself out,
had exhausted its social forces. Circumstances had arisen that made any
social reforms in contemporary Russia impossible. The Duma was concerned
with trivialities; if it did adopt any decision, the Council of State and
the Court annulled it or changed it beyond all recognition.There were
no possibilities of effecting reforms in contemporary Russia. This
made clear the demagogy of Cadet tactics in submitting to the Duma various
“bills of principle” for all kinds of liberties; they introduced them
because they knew that the Duma could under no circumstances adopt
them. “We have a constitution, thank God!” Milyukov had exclaimed. There
could not be any reforms under the existing social system although Russia’s
internal situation was pitiful and her backwardness, even as compared with
Asia, was obvious. Even the Octobrist press had said “it is impossible to
go on living like this any longer”.

Allthis made clear the tasks of a proletariatfaced with another
revolution. The mood was rising. In 1910 the number of strikers,
according to official statistics, had been only 40,000, but in 1912 it had
been 680,000, of which 500,000 had taken part in political strikes.

Thismade clear the tactics of the Russian Social-Democrats. They would
have to strengthen their organisation, their press, etc.; that was the ABC
of socialist tactics long since elaborated in the West, especially by the
German Social-Democrats. The primary task of the R.S.D.L.P., however, was
to train the massesfor democratic revolution.This task was no longer on the order of the day in the West; theirs was an
altogether different task, that of mobilisation, of mustering the masses
and training and organising them for the abolition of the capitalist
system.

Ifattention were concentrated on the question of the approaching
revolution in Russia and on the tasks of the Social Democrats in that
revolution, the essence of the dispute with those known as “liquidators”
among the Russian Social-Democrats would be understood. Liquidationism was
not the invention of a section of the Russian Social-Democrats; the first
liquidators were the “Narodniks”, who in 1906 published their slogans in
the magazineRusskoye
Bogatstvo[5]—down with the underground movement, down with the
republic! The liquidators wanted to abolish the illegal party and organise
an open party. That was ridiculous, especially if we bear in mind that even
the Progressists (a mixture of Octobrists and Cadets) dared not ask to be
legalised. Under such circumstances the liquidators’ slogans were downright
treachery. It stood to reason that an illegal party should take advantage
of all legal opportunities—the press, the Duma, even the insurance
law[6]—but only for the purpose of extending agitation and
organisation; the substance of the agitation must remain
revolutionary.There must be a struggle against the illusion that there
was a constitution in Russia, and reformist slogans should be counter-posed
by the slogan of revolution, of a republic!

Suchwas the content of Comrade Lenin’s report. One of those present
asked him about his attitude to the national question; the speaker said
that the Russian Social-Democratic Party recognised in full the right of
every nation to “self-determination”, to decide its own fate, even to
secede from Russia. The Russian revolution and the cause of democracy were
not in any way connected (as was the case in Germany) with the cause of
unification, centralisation. The democratisation of Russia depended not on
the national but on the agrarian question.

Atthe same time Comrade Lenin stressed the necessity for full unity
throughout the revolutionary army of the proletariat of different
nationalities in the struggle for the full democratisation of the
country. Only on that basis could the national question be solved, as in
America, Belgiumand Switzerland. The speaker dealt polemically with Renner’s theses on the
national question and came out sharply against the slogan of
cultural-national autonomy. There were people in Russia who maintained that
Russia’s further development would follow the Austrian path, a path that
was slow and rotten. But, said the speaker, we must beware of any national
struggle within Social-Democracy because it would militate against the
great task of revolutionary struggle; in that respect the national struggle
in Austria should be a warning to
us.[7]The Caucasian Social-Democrats should be a model for Russia; they
conducted propaganda simultaneously in the Georgian, Armenian Tatar and
Russian
languages.[8]

[1]Thisnewspaper report of a lecture delivered by Lenin in Cracow on
April 18, 1913 (N.S.) was published inNaprzód(Forward), the Central Organ of the Polish Social-Democratic Party
of Galicia and Silesia, issued in Cracow from 1892 onwards.

[2]Leninis here referring to the reactionary coup d’état of June 3
(16), 1907 when the government dissolved the Second Duma and changed the
law regulating elections to the Duma.

Thenew election law greatly increased the Duma representation of the
landed proprietors and the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie and
greatly reduced the already tiny number of peasant, worker and non-Russian
deputies. The new law allotted one elector to 230 voters in the Landowner
curia, 1,000 voters in the first urban curia (big bourgeoisie), 15,000
voters in the second urban curia (other urban voters), 60,000 voters in the
peasant curia, and 125 000 in the worker curia. As a result of the June
Third Election Law, the Third and Fourth Dumas were mainly Black-Hundred
and Cadet in composition.

[3]The“patriarchal slogans” of Katkov and Pobedonostsevwas
the name Lenin gave to their demand for the “inalienability” of peasant
allotments, the preservation of the village commune and other survivals of
serfdom. Katkov was the editor of the reactionaryMoskovskiye
Vedomosti(Moscow Recorder) and Pobedonostsev was the
Procurator General of the Synod; both were ardent advocates of the policy
of privileges for the landed nobility, pursued by Alexander III.

[4]Thisrefers to a reactionary organisation, theCouncil of the
United Nobility, founded in May 1906. The Council exercised
considerable influence over the policy of the tsarist government. Lenin
called it the “Council of the United Feudalists”.

[5]RusskoyeBogatstvo(Russian Wealth)—a monthly
magazine published in St. Petersburg from 1876 to the middle of 1918. In
the early 1890s it became an organ of the liberal Narodniks. From 1906
onwards the magazine was actually the organ of the Popular Socialist Party,
a semi-Cadet organisation. In this period Lenin defined the policy ofRusskoye Bogatstvoas “Narodnik, Narodnik Cadet”.

[6]Thelaw referred to was promulgated on June 23 (July 6), 1912; it
provided for insurance against illness and accidents and was adopted by the
Third Duma under pressure from the working-class movement. The law covered
only 20 per cent of all industrial workers and did not provide benefits in
cases of disablement, old age and unemployment.

TheBolshevik Party organised a mass campaign for the expansion of
workers’ insurance, thereby strengthening its influence among the
working-class masses.

[7]Thestruggle within the Austrian Social-Democratic Party resulted in
the fragmentation of the united party into six national Social-Democratic
parties—German, Czech, Polish, Ruthenian, Italian and South-Slav. There
was constant friction between these parties.

[8]TheSocial-Democrat Bolshevik organisations in the Caucasus united the
advanced proletarians of many nationalities.